Conflicts Forum

Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett
The first anniversary of Barack Obama’s inauguration as President of the United States came this week. The sharpest criticism of Obama’s first-year record on domestic and economic affairs came from the Nobel prize-winning economist, New York Times columnist, and Princeton professor Paul Krugman.
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Sheikh Chafiq Jeradeh
The Islamic Revolution in Iran has come to be defined for many by the concept of Wilayat al-Faqih (the Jurist’s Guardianship), instituted by Imam Khomeini - May Allah Sanctify His Soul (MASHS). Wilayat al-Faqih represents an Islamic concept that is based on the values of the Sufi-Irfan idea that it is possible […]

Alastair Crooke
Whilst America has been absorbed by the Afghan election imbroglio, a less-noticed event slid into place in the Middle East. It is less dramatic than President Karzai’s near removal; but this event tilts the strategic balance: Turkey finally shrugged off its US straight-jacket; stared-past any beckoning EU membership, and has fixed its eyes toward […]

By Alastair Crooke
The country is emerging as a regional power. Is the West ready for that?
It was pure drama: The leaders of the United States, Britain, and France stepped onto the stage at the Pittsburgh Group of 20 meeting last week to unveil Western intelligence that showed that Iran had a second nuclear fuel enrichment […]

By Alastair Crooke, Conflicts Forum, July 9, 2009
The troubles that followed the Iranian Presidential elections have – with rare exceptions – been misread by the Western press and policymakers; it was not an East European model ‘colour revolution’; nor was Presidential candidate Mir Hussein Mousavi’s movement an uprising of liberal westernised sympathisers against the principles […]

By Mark Perry, Bitter Lemons, June 18, 2009
We in the “the West” have a special place in our traditions for anniversaries. We celebrate two important ones just now. It was twenty years ago that thousands of children arrived in China’s Tiananmen Square to petition their leaders for greater rights. They built a papier-mache statue of […]